The BradCast w/ Brad Friedman
'BradCast' 9/2/2024 (Encore: NatSec journo Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel on reported hack by Iran of Trump Campaign)
Encore: original airdate 8-14-2024. On today's 'BradCast': Major media outlets report someone is shopping around purported internal Trump Campaign documents. The Trump Campaign claims it was hacked by Iran, and threatened media outlets against publication of the purloined documents, a hypocritical reversal of Donald Trump's glee over the publication of internal Clinton Campaign documents in 2016. Independent national security journalist MARCY WHEELER of Emptywheel explains what is known and unknown about the Trump Campaign hack, Iran's alleged involvement, and the serious national security implications of Trump co-mingling his campaign accounts with his legal accounts, potentially allowing hackers to gain access to highly classified information related to Trump's stolen classified documents case. Also today: Tropical Storm Ernesto caused extensive damage to Puerto Rico's electric grid as it intensified into a hurricane. Primary results in CT, VT, MN and WI underscore the Democrats' tenuous hold on their US Senate majority in November.
- Broadcast on:
- 02 Sep 2024
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This is broadcast producer Desi Doyan. We're off today for the Labor Day holiday. Today's broadcast was originally recorded on August 14th, 2024. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Well, my how the worm has turned since 2016, hey? Well, I don't know why I came here tonight. I've got the feeling of something right. Now what I ain't? I'm so scared and in case I fall off my chair. And I'm wondering how I'll get downstairs. Clowns to the left of me, joke us to the right. Here I am, start getting a little with you. I am. From Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, this is the broadcast that's heard on KPFK. 90.7 FM in LA. Also in California in Red Bluffin' Redding on KFOI and Round Mountains KKRN. Up in Oregon on the Central Coast on KYAQ, Cartage Groves, KSO and Eugene's KEPW. Lancaster, Pennsylvania's W News, Maui, Hawaii's KAKU in Columbus, Ohio on WGRN. Pailinville, New York's WLPP and Rochester, New York's WRFZ. Down in New Orleans on WHIV, out in Gallup, New Mexico on KNIZ. Concord, New Hampshire's WNHN. Fayetteville, Arkansas's KPSQ in Seattle, Washington. On KODX, Richmond, Virginia's WRWK. Fairmont, West Virginia's WEFR. Jamesville, Wisconsin's WADR and Minneapolis, St. Paul's AM950. K-T-N-F, we also stream coast to coast to coast to end around the globe every day for your listening convenience on the internet, on the progressive voices channel, NetRooze Radio, Radio for Humans, decalsandler.com, Radio Free Brooklyn, no lies radio, detour talk, and most of your favorite podcast sites. Blankening planet Earth, I'm Brad Friedman, your friendly investigative blogger, journalist, troublemaker, muckraker, and all around swellfellow says me from bradblog.com. Thank you for joining us today. Coming up shortly, I suspect by now you have heard at least some of the reports initially by Politico, then New York Times, then Washington Post over the past few days that someone calling themselves Robert has been reaching out to media outlets with information that this persona claims comes from inside the Trump campaign, including vetting documents on Trump's eventual vice presidential pick, JD Vance, and more material described by this Robert person as being marked as, quote, "privileged and confidential material." And you also may have heard that the Trump campaign is now claiming that they were hacked by Iran, somehow, even if they've yet to provide any evidence of that hack, though they seem to be conflating that hack with those reported leaks of internal campaign documents, and you also may have heard that Microsoft has issued a security bulletin saying that, in fact, Iran has been attempting various cyber attacks against a former presidential campaign official, but without originally specifying which campaign that was. And while all of these things may go together, it's also possible they do not. But if they do, as you probably have not heard this week, this cyber intrusion, whatever it was and whoever did it, may be much more than simply a hack of the Trump campaign's internal communications by foreign adversary. But thanks to the way that Trump rolls, well, this could be an actual national security issue for the U.S. itself. As our friend, Marcie Wheeler over at Empty Wheel has been reporting this week, she will be joining us shortly to explain all of that. Oh, goody. Some more national security issues. That's what we needed. Yeah, well, this could be a troubling one if her suspicions are right and her suspicions usually are, but we will see. Also today. Hi, Desi Doyan. Hi. Also today, voters on Tuesday in Connecticut, Vermont, Minnesota and battleground Wisconsin took to the polls for congressional and state primaries and a few ballot initiatives of note. We'll get to all of that in a second, but do allow me to touch base quickly here with our own Desi Doyan as yet another Atlantic hurricane is now spun up in a very short time over record warm waters in the Caribbean. What do we need to know for the moment about Hurricane Ernesto at this hour, Desiree? Well, I think for the first thing to know about Ernesto, it's now a hurricane, a category one. It is not expected to make landfall in the continental United States. It did already skirt Puerto Rico and caused a lot of damage there. But first, Ernesto became a category one hurricane in the Caribbean on Wednesday. It is expected to continue to strengthen over, as you mentioned, record hot oceans as it heads directly northward to Bermuda. It's expected to reach at least a major category three when it hits Bermuda sometime on Friday. Puerto Rico avoided a direct hit from Ernesto, which is good, but Ernesto's outer band still unleashed flooding rainfall and heavy winds that impacted the island's frail electric grid infrastructure. It's frail because it's still being rebuilt from Hurricane Maria just a couple years ago. Back in 2017, which was a category four. So right now, as we go to air, about 730,000 customers in Puerto Rico are without power on the island, President Biden has approved a declaration of emergency to free up resources for Puerto Rico. And current models indicate that Ernesto is likely to maybe even go as far as Nova Scotia in Canada, but it might also have some coastal impacts in New England as it moves its way up there. And you know, it's just important for people to remember, climate changes causing such storms to produce heavier rainfall and undergo more frequent and significant bouts of rapid intensification. So these things can really be surprising and hurricanes can change course quickly. So just keep an eye on it if you're in the on the east coast as of now, however, expected to head towards Bermuda and then essentially spin off to the north and disappear at some point. Yes, it will not hit that many people. We will keep our eyes on that. Thank you very much. Desi Doyan asked to Tuesday's primary elections in four different states, Connecticut, Vermont, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. There was, well, no tremendous surprises and everything appears so far, at least, who have run smoothly for voters, which is always my top concern as I have neither found any problems reported of note, nor heard from anyone having them, though you're always free to email me with what I may have missed via broadcast@bradblog.com. But let's run through a few of the most noteworthy results from Tuesday before we get to Marcie Wheeler. And frankly, there were not a whole lot of them noteworthy results on Tuesday. Connecticut will start in Connecticut, Connecticut Republicans, and there are not a lot of them either, selected restaurateur and pub owner and Trump ally Matt Corey to once again run as their U.S. Senate nominee this year. Corey lost previous races in Connecticut for both the U.S. House and Senate. And yet he will again take on the popular Democratic incumbent Senator Chris Murphy in November even as no Republican has won a Senate race in the state of Connecticut since 1982. That would be a little wiker for those of you keeping track at home. Almost all House races in the state of Connecticut went uncontested on Tuesday on both the Republican and the Democratic side. And all incumbents in the state will, in fact, move on to the general election in Vermont, like all of the states this week. No major surprises, though, a bit of history in the making with Democrats nominating African-American educator Esther Charleston in their primary for governor as the first woman of color to run on a major party ticket for governor in Vermont. She will face Republican governor Phil Scott in November who is seeking his fifth two-year term, they have two-year terms for governor in Vermont. That sounds painful if you have to vote all the time for that. Yeah, well, if you have to run all the time for that nonetheless Phil Scott is seeking his fifth two-year term. He ran on a post on the Republican side on Tuesday in a state which leans Democratic in statewide presidential and U.S. Senate races but still has a habit of electing Republican governors for some reason nonetheless. We will see if that continues in just over two months' time. Most House and Senate candidates, including, by the way, Bernie Sanders, ran uncontested this year in the Green Mountain State, that would be Vermont. So again, no real surprises. In Minnesota, in the great state of Minnesota, and we don't say that just because we have a great affiliate there, KTNF, AM950, we say it because it is great. The land of 10,000 lakes and the home to freshly minted Democratic vice presidential candidate and two-term governor, Tim Walz, in that great state, incumbent Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar easily won her primary race on Tuesday and will be the favorite this November in facing off against Republican Royce White who won on Tuesday. He is a former pro-basketball player and at the age of 33, by the way, he's the first major party U.S. Senate nominee to be born in the 1990s apparently. Wow. What a concept. Do you feel old? I do. You should. Royce was declared the, I should say, white was declared the winner out of a large field of Republicans on Tuesday. And yes, this means that Republicans have nominated yet another African-American former pro-sports figure. And in this case, again, with reported mental health issues to run for the U.S. Senate. White was seen literally standing by convicted Trump aide Steve Bannon's side recently as Bannon, who endorsed and promoted white, surrendered for his four-month federal prison stint. White is also said to be friends with bankrupt conspiracist Alex Jones and has been denounced as misogynistic. For example, he has described women as, "To Malvi," he has been called homophobic, anti-Semitic after complaining out loud about, quote, "the Jewish lobby." That resulted in the Republican Jewish coalition endorsing his main opponent in the Republican primary, but the state GOP nonetheless endorsed White. Despite all of that and his legal and financial problems, including unpaid child support and reportedly illegally spending campaign money at a Florida strip club after he lost a race for Congress in 2022, nonetheless, Minnesota Republicans gave him the thumbs up. White's own grandfather, by the way, has apparently spoken out against him. And what he has described as his grandson's turn toward extremist politics, quote, "There's no way I can support my grandson supporting the GOP and, in essence, Trump," said his grandfather Frank White back in 2022 when he was running for Congress. His grandfather said, quote, "This is a guy who wants to be a dictator talking about Trump. Think about what that means. You're a person of color. Do you think you fit in his plans?" So that's who they nominated to run against Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate. This year. And as in most of the other states on Tuesday, no particular surprises with incumbents on both sides winning their primaries. But U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a member of the Progressive Squad in the U.S. House and a critic of Israel's war in Gaza, easily won her Democratic nomination again in Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District, against the candidate who was boosted by a few wealthy pro-Israel donors. That of course, noteworthy after two fellow squad members elsewhere, Jamal Bowman in New York and Cory Bush in Missouri recently were successfully targeted and turfed out in their Democratic primaries by candidates supported by millions and millions of dollars from political action committees associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or APAC. Omar, however, appears to have easily won her race on Tuesday in Minnesota by about 13 points. Wisconsin voters on Tuesday rejected Republican-authored ballot questions that would have limited the state's Democratic governor's power to spend federal money that comes to the state for things like disaster relief. This was a big win for Democrats who had mobilized against those two measures as their U.S. Senate candidate was running uncontested in her primary on Tuesday. So Republicans had, I think, hoped for low turnout by Democrats, that they might be able to get those measures over the hump. Well, they didn't. They voters, Democratic voters, came out anyway and fairly easily shut down both questions one and two on the ballot on Tuesday. Also, in Wisconsin, Trump endorsed self-funded, multi-millionaire Eric Hovde, easily won Wisconsin's GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. As expected, he will now run in a critical contest against incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin in November. Baldwin ran uncontested on Tuesday. Her seat is one of half a dozen or so that are being targeted by Republicans hoping to regain the Senate majority this year. Republicans will need to flip just one or two seats in order to do so depending on who wins the White House. And they are believed virtually guaranteed to flip at least one of those seats, the one currently being held by right-wing Democrat-turned-independent Joe Manchin in West Virginia, as he has chosen to not run for re-election, so that will almost certainly be filled by Republican Governor Jim Justice who was running for that seat in West Virginia. He was also a coal billionaire. Coal Baron just like Joe Manchin. Yes, but he's actually got even more money than Joe Manchin and he's also a even bigger climate science denier than Joe Manchin is. So, yeah, if Democrats do lose the Senate majority, that's going to be a problem for climate action going forward. We reported on the Wisconsin Republican now, the nominee, Eric Heavd, earlier this year in Wisconsin after he had set in a radio show that, quote, "almost nobody in a nursing home is mentally competent to vote." Remember that? So we'll see how well that goes over with Wisconsin's seniors this year. Anyway, he will be running against Baldwin, the real clear politics polling average. However, finds Baldwin for now leading over Heavd with just over six-point lead right now. Democratic candidates are said to be leading right now, according to that real clear politics polling average in Senate races where they are defending seats this year, including Arizona, while they're not defending us here. The outgoing Kyrsten Sinema is leaving, but the Democrat, Guyaga, is, Ruben Guyaga is said to be leading the Republican Kerry Lake there in Arizona. Democrats are also leading in Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Jared Brown, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, but not in Montana for the moment, where Republican Tim Sheehy is said to be running about four and a half points ahead of the very red-leaning state's three-term Democratic incumbent senator, John Tester. So a loss for Tester in November, along with West Virginia seat, flipped to Republicans. Well, that could tilt the Senate majority back to Republicans this year, depending on how everything else goes. So yeah, some important elections other than for president this year. Next Tuesday, by the way, congressional primaries will be held in three more states. That would be Alaska, Wyoming, and the great state of Florida. But today, about a week before election day next week, after spending years telling his supporters that, you know, early in mail-in voting, totally fraudulent, don't do it. And that election day should only be one single day. Everyone should have to come out on election day, whether they can get off of work or not, whether they are sick or not, whether they are in town or not. They should all come out on that one single day. Well, after all of that, and anyone else, you know, if they can't make it, they're just out of luck. Well, a week before the Florida primary elections, Donald Trump cast his ballot in the Florida primary on Wednesday during the state's early voting period, like the disgraced former president and convicted felon, who is, by the way, only allowed to vote in Florida as a convicted felon. He's apparently only allowed to vote there now because he has yet to be sentenced for those 34 felonies that he's been convicted of in New York state. But anyway, like that disgraced former president and convicted felon, I do hope that our listeners in those states, Alaska, Wyoming, and Florida will get out and vote as well so that you can have at least some comfort that you are registered to vote as you think you are in advance of November. And if not, you can get your registration done, worked out, adjusted now rather than two and a half months from now on general election day, especially in Florida where they have a history of purging people, voters, right before the election, and they're not supposed to do that. Florida would never do such a thing. Yeah, so get out there, vote. Make sure you're actually registered and all of that, even if there are no surprises, even if there are not a lot, not a lot of challenged races on the ballot and so forth. Also, this week, before we take a quick break here, initiatives to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitutions of Arizona and, yes, my old home state of Missouri, where big government Republicans have radically restricted the medical procedure coming between patients and their doctors to decide what they may or may not be able to do, well, two in each state, constitutional measures qualified for the November ballot in both Arizona and Missouri this week. And apparently, bigly by big numbers, the signatures that they were able to gather in both states, though I will note shortly before airtime today, the radical far right big government Arizona State Supreme Court decided that an information pamphlet for state voters concerning this constitutional measure in Arizona may refer to a fetus as a "unborn human being." That would be the same high court that decided that a law from the 1800s before Arizona was even a state restricting all abortion without exceptions, the same court that decided that that measure was still valid after the corrupt US Supreme Court took away abortion rights 50 years after the Roe v. Wade precedent. So today, that court sided with Republican lawmakers over proponents of the ballot measure on abortion rights, which would, in effect, restore the rights of Roe v. Wade. Will Arizona voters fall for it? This unborn human being nonsense, well, I don't know, apparently the folks who supported proponents of this measure were concerned enough about it to take it to court, but we will see. I don't think Arizona voters are that dumb, but we'll find out. I think they will be able to read through the prejudicial language and actually understand that this is about women being allowed to control their very own bodies. And it could, of course, change things big for voters in November for Democrats. They are trying to hold on to that state that they had flipped by the barris of margins by about 10,000 votes back in 2020 when Joe Biden won it. And now you, you know, may have every reason, especially with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket for voters to come out in Arizona this November as well, not just for the presidential race, not just for the US Senate race with Ruben Gaego facing off against election denier Kerry Lake, but also for this ballot measure. And by the way, also true in my old home state of Missouri. So get out there and vote. All right, let's take a quick break. We will come back with our friend, Marcie Wheeler of empty will to help make some sense of what is and isn't known to have happened in this recently reported hack of the Trump campaign said to be by Iranian affiliates, if there was a hack, if they were Iranian, and some of the potential very disturbing problems that are not yet being reported, if, in fact, all of that actually happened. We'll get it all sorted out and make sense of it somehow after this. I'm Brad Friedman and you are listening to the broadcast. Both major corporations now control more than 80% of the media in the United States, but they don't control us. The broadcast and the green news report are 100% independent, 100% listener supported, but we can't do it alone. We need you. Please help us bring real facts to listeners at independent stations around the nation. You can make a difference. Support independent media drop by bradblog.com/donate that's bradblog.com/donate. Thanks. Hey, this is Brad, you're listening to an encore presentation of the broadcast. We'll get back to the broadcast. Brad Friedman from bradblog.com. As multiple media sources have been reporting since the weekend, at least three news outlets were leaked confidential material said to have come from inside the Donald Trump campaign in recent days, including its report vetting J.D. Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each outlet, first Politico, then New York Times, then Washington Post, has refused to reveal any noteworthy details about what they received exactly. Instead, all three have written about what they have described as a potential hack of the Trump campaign and described the material given to them in broad terms. Politico wrote over the weekend about receiving emails starting July 22 from someone identifying themselves only as Robert that included a 271-page campaign document about Vance and a partial vetting report on Senator Marco Rubio, who was also considered as a potential vice president for Donald Trump. Both Politico and the Post said that two people had independently confirmed that the documents were authentic. The Times wrote about the Vance report, quote, "Like many such vetting documents, they contained past statements with the potential to be embarrassing or damaging such as Mr. Vance's remarks casting aspersions on Mr. Trump. But the decisions by the three outlets to not publish the material, observes AP's David Bouder, stands in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, at the time. The website WikiLeaks published a trove of these embarrassing, if not particularly, newsworthy misives and mainstream news organizations covered them avidly. On the heels of the reported leaks from the Trump campaign, the campaign claimed that it had been hacked by Iran. While the campaign provided no evidence for that claim, it came just a day or so after a Microsoft report had detailed an effort by an Iranian military intelligence unit to compromise the email account of a former senior advisor to a presidential campaign, though the report did not specify which campaign. That was enough, apparently, for the Trump campaign to declare that they had been hacked and that the culprit was Iran. The Trump campaign over the weekend appeared to threaten any media outlets who might even consider publishing internal document, internal Trump campaign documents. Robert had this so-called Robert had told the news outlets that they had access to much more campaign spokesperson Steve Chung, however, said, quote, any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America's enemies, unquote. But of course, the Trump campaign back in 2016 had a very different feeling about publishing internal communications from the Democratic Hillary Clinton campaign that was seemingly hacked by another of America's enemies. In fact, Donald Trump himself led the way this just came out. This just came out. WikiLeaks. I love WikiLeaks. The Hillary Clinton documents released today by WikiLeaks exposed by WikiLeaks. We don't talk about WikiLeaks. They want to distract us from WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks. The WikiLeaks. They got it all down, folks. WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. So that was back in 2016. Now contrast that to today, 2024, when the Trump campaign says that any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications from the Trump campaign are doing the bidding of America's enemies. In 2020, you'll recall the Trump campaign was similarly interested in encouraging media outlets to report on materials said to have been purloin from a laptop computer owned by Joe Biden's son, Hunter. Now, however, the team Trump is adamant that outlets who publish such material are doing the bidding of America's enemies. The FBI released a brief statement on Monday that read, quote, we can confirm the FBI is investigating this matter by Tuesday, CNN and others reported that investigators probing the apparent hack and leak operation suspect the hackers were able to compromise the personal email accounts of Republican dirty trickster convicted felon long time Trump buddy, Roger Stone. The hackers reportedly used access to stones compromised email accounts to try and then break into the account of a senior Trump campaign official as part of a persistent effort to access campaign networks. All of that said, I don't know that it is even confirmed yet that the leaks in question which Trump's campaign manager blames on Iran actually came from Iran or even were even a hack at all for that matter as opposed to a leak as the person named Robert suggested. But if they were a hack by Iran, reports our friend, Marcy Wheeler, it could be much, much worse than access gain simply to, you know, those campaign vetting documents. In fact, given the way that the Trump campaign and Trump legal team appear to intermingle files, notes Wheeler, this intrusion by whoever it was could actually be more than just a threat to Trump, but could threaten US national security itself here to explain all of that. What we know and what we don't know is the great independent national security journalist Marcy Wheeler of empty wheel.net to in addition to blogging every day at her own side has also been a contributor over the years to publications like The Intercept, The New York Times, The Guardian, Politico and others. Oh, Marcy, thank you for staying up after hours out there in Ireland to join us again here on the Bradcast. Always good to talk to people in California. It's good to be in California. Come on out and visit. Anyway, Ms. Marcy. So first, I'd like to very simply clarify some things that we know and some things that we don't know before getting deeper into some of the more disturbing questions and observations that you raised about national security and so forth. So first, just a few easy, hopefully simple clarifying questions that have been hard to come by clear answers for in the mainstream reporting. Team Trump has said they were hacked by Iran, but for some reason, I don't exactly trust Team Trump for anything. So do we know for a fact that the campaign was actually hacked at all versus either an attempt to hack or a leak from an insider versus a hack? And well, before I get to be, let me let you answer A. So Washington Post on a story that included Ellen Nakashimi and Shane Harris, so people who are good on hacking, said that they had confirmed this Microsoft report about a former adviser, his account being hacked, and Iranian Republican guards basically using that compromised account to try and hack, to try and compromise the account of an existing top Trump adviser. So they said that. And then Chris Krebs, who was the head of SISA, so the head of this kind of stuff under Trump until Trump fired him for telling the truth, the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency. Yes, go ahead. Right. Whose job it is to keep election secure, said, this is the real thing from what I hear, it's the real thing. So those are three people who are reliable, who all say the description that Microsoft gave, which is that a former adviser was hacked, and that Iranian Republican guard hackers used that account to try and hack a Trump official, that that refers to Donald Trump's campaign. So, and frankly, and the stories on the FBI investigating it, they also revealed that three people in the Biden-Harris orbit, you know, because this is in the period when they were transitioning, were also, they were attempted fishes of them that were, the implication is unsuccessful. So this is not a campaign targeting just Donald Trump. They also targeted Biden-Harris. And thus far, the only thing that we can be certain of is that somebody, some former adviser of Donald Trump, was actually hacked. And Roger Stone and his attorney have said that that was him. So it seems like we've got these various sort of disparate pieces that everyone is suggesting links up, but that we don't yet have the hard material to know that yes, Iran was responsible for trying to hack, then succeeding to hack, then getting these documents, and then sharing them with these media outlets. But all of these pieces seem to suggest as much, even if it's not actually hard to confirm, I can't. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. One of the things that's important is the stories from reliable journalists who said that the FBI says they're investigating is they'll say that, sure, Roger Stone was hacked, sure, three people were targeted on the Biden-Harris orbit, and that there was an attempt to hack a Trump adviser. What they won't say, what those stories are pretty clear about, is that the FBI is not yet confirming that the documents shared with Politico, with Politico, New York Times, and Martian Post, that those came from the hack. And it raises interesting questions. Maybe only Roger Stone was hacked. Maybe he had JD Vance's vetting file. Maybe Roger Stone has files on Donald Trump's criminal or Donald Trump's legal cases, which the persona says also happened. So one explanation for this is that Donald Trump was never hacked, Roger Stone was, and he's got a lot more files than maybe he should. Now, you have a better memory than me, Marcie Wheeler, but I believe I'm recalling back in 2016 when Trump actually criticized the Democrats for being hacked as having weak security on their computer networks, claiming that Russians or whoever had also tried to hack the GOP, but that their defenses were far superior to the inept Democrats. Am I remembering that correctly? Oh, you know, the amount of shot on Friday that people should absolutely engage in only starts there. I mean, my favorite one is that for seven years, Republicans have said, if you are hacked, you must immediately provide your server to the FBI, and if you don't, it will not be investigated properly. And so, I mean, of course, none of the goldfish journalists swimming around Donald Trump will ask him this, but according to the rules, the Republicans have set down for seven years. Donald Trump should stop mid campaign, mid whatever crimes he's in the process of committing because he can't help himself and hand his servers over to the FBI to properly investigate this alleged attack by Iran. That is what should happen, and that's where I want to go because I want to see that happen. Because their criticism back in 2016 and for years thereafter, from Republicans, from Fox News was they were furious that the FBI never demanded the DNC turn over all of their computers, but instead, they made, I guess, copies of the hard drive images of it, these, you know, sort of bite by bite copies of the hard drives for their investigation. And then, yeah, they spent years saying it wasn't a real investigation because they didn't turn over the computer. So no evidence that the Trump campaign is turning over all of their computer servers to the FBI. No, but then again, I mean, with the people pretending to be journalists swimming around Donald Trump, he's not going to be asked that he's going to be asked for the 15th time. We know let's talk about crowd sizes and inviting him to lie about crowd sizes. I noted in my intro that the mainstream media outlets in a seemingly very different posture from what we saw in previous years, particularly in 2016, speaking of those goldfish media, they were not publishing the material that they got from this leaker, whoever it was. Why do you think that is, and, by the way, should they be running at least whatever might be newsworthy and vetted and authenticated and so forth from this material? There is a newsworthy story they're not telling, and that is to look through the dossier they have on JD Vance and figure out where the holes are. And the reason that's newsworthy is because, among other outlets, The New York Times, which of course has this dossier, has quoted Donald Trump himself asking whether the people who have vetted JD Vance knew of some of the things that have come out. So the Trump campaign is surprised by stuff they should have picked up in vetting, like the cat ladies, the single cat ladies, childless cat ladies, yes. Childless cat ladies, like he did not know about the childless cat ladies. I want to know whether they knew about the picture of him in drag while he was at Yale. And so it is newsworthy and very easy to look at the vetting document. It's only 300 pages. I could do it and say, oh gosh, they did actually miss the childless cat ladies. They did miss the drag. They did miss the forward for a Nazi. They did miss the other forward for a Nazi. They did miss the third forward for somebody who wrote the Project 2025 that we're claiming to have nothing. Those are real questions. And you don't have to publish the dossier itself. You don't have to infringe on JD Vance's privacy as if he cares about ours. You don't have to infringe on his privacy to do that story. And it is a real story. Donald Trump has made it a story. Donald Trump's donors have made it a story. And if you receive this, Marcy Wheeler, if this Robert persona actually contacted you, actually gave you those documents, you would you would run them, at least if not run publishing the full document, but publish those newsworthy facts. If Robert were to contact you, Robert were to contact me, I would run what I just said. Even if they're potentially stolen documents. Yeah, I think I would, because it is newsworthy and because it goes to, I mean, look, in the months ahead, we're going to have another interesting conversation about whether Donald Trump plans to, instead of Ivanka and Jared Kushner, who were unqualified, but at least mediocre, whether he plans to put his other spawn, Don Jr. especially who is unqualified and also an idiot in the White House. And Don Jr. is the one who largely pushed the choice of JD Vance on Donald Trump. And so this goes to the qualification of Trump and his family. And given the last administration, we have good cause to say we need to vet your family too, because we don't know if you're going to give them security clearance and plop them in the middle of the Oval Office. Now, as you report at Empty Wheel this week, there are two even more troubling points about all of this, that sort of gained your attention, one, that an email breach had actually occurred earlier this summer, and according to the reporting, and that the Trump campaign did not inform the FBI about it, and never mind giving them the servers, but they didn't even tell the FBI about it, and two, the documents promised by this Robert character are said to be marked as, quote, privileged and confidential and could include both internal Trump campaign emails and documents related to Trump's court cases. So can you explain those two concerns and why each, each of those seems to have really raised your own alarm bells above and beyond how this has otherwise been reported by the corporate media to date? Well, it, it sounds like what we've learned since then, that the FBI and Microsoft figured out they'd been hacked and then approached them as the FBI tried to do with Hillary Clinton in 2016, and she just sort of blew it off for months. They figured Microsoft, Microsoft and the FBI figured out that Iran had hacked the Trumpers and let them know about it. Is that right? And let them know about it. Okay. Yeah, because, I mean, think about it, and this is one of the reasons attribution in 2016 is not just the FBI, Microsoft is sort of like a mini NSA. I mean, they've got visibility over the entire world. So if anybody's using their infrastructure to do something like this, Microsoft is actually going to be able to figure some of it out, which is what happened. They either approach Trump directly or approach, and that's how you get to, that's how you get to Roger Stone. It sounds like they identified Roger Stone as compromised and they addressed Roger Stone. Roger Stone is claiming he's cooperating. He is, of course, a pathological liar, so I am now curious how, and in what way he is not cooperating, because if he says he's cooperating, then chances are he's not. The thing that I have a concern, the thing I have a concern about, even generally, Donald Trump has not firewalled his campaign from his crimes. And by that, I mean, he was investigated, investigated for defrauding his supporters by raising money, claiming to spend it on voter, you know, voter integrity, and instead spending it on the defense lawyers for his people. That's just, that's the most important example, but there are, you know, maybe 50 examples of the ways in which his campaign, like the money he's raising is going into his defense guns, and he is using that to pay off loyal staffers, and he is imposing loyalty tests on them before he gives them that money. And then other loyal staffers are using it to get rich. It's just this cesspool and the problem with it being a cesspool, I mean, and the vetting document that's, that was the New York Times described the JD Vance vetting document is having been done by a law from called brand Woodward. And Stanley Woodward represents eight Donald Trump clunkies. So Stan Woodward, who by the way, in court documents, it has made it quite clear that he's not all that adept with cybersecurity himself. Stan Woodward is this person whose firm was part of vetting JD Vance, but who also knows exactly has been read into the 32 documents, the 32 classified documents charged against Donald Trump. He is the, he's the defense attorney for Walt Nauta. So because you've got a document in, we assume the Iranian's hands, that really hits to the core of that overlap of the overlap. I mean, why would you put the, they're not the best people to hire for vetting. There are other Republican firms, you can do that. Whatever reason, Donald Trump decided to hire these ultra loyal people who are key to his defense, who are not the best people to vet JD Vance. So that's one of the reasons I want to find out whether they did a good job of vetting JD Vance. And so if you, for example, were to hack their computer, it'd be a gold mine, it'd be a gold mine and it'd be a gold mine that would make all of us less secure. Just remember, we know one of the documents charged against Donald Trump is a document that summarizes the 2019 plans against Iran if they attacked us. There's another one that almost certainly describes Iran's, what we knew in the same time period about Iran's nuclear program. There are probably another two that pertain to leaving the Iran deal that Obama formed. There are documents that Trump stole that pertain to Iran. So if you are hacking people in the vicinity of Stan Woodward, if you have a document that was private and confidential that involves Stan Woodward, then you're getting a lot closer to things that go to Trump's stolen documents case. And that's one of several reasons, it's not the only one, but that's one of several reasons where if the Iranians were as successful as Russia was, you could have like a snowballing effect on the national security implications here. The other thing that's really important, I'll go ahead. Well, no, so I just sort of want to review this because so Brand Woodward, this legal company that did the vetting of JD Vance, Stan Woodward and I should note Stan Brand, who has been a guest on this show a couple of times over the years, but if you were able to get the documents coming from their office, it is likely that their office also has these other documents, these national security documents related to Trump's national security case. Like they would be related, they would not be the actual documents that Trump is charged with, because those are in a vault somewhere. Discussion about those documents perhaps between the right, I mean, that right, exactly. I mean, there, there's, there is stuff that is confidential that pertains to these that might help around figure out what was charged. This is the point is that, you know, now, like there, these things should be most normal human beings firewall these things, most normal human beings have their defense attorneys, and they pay their defense attorneys out of one fund, they have their political fundraising, and that's all one fund, which is how it's supposed to be legally. And then they have their private business. And Donald Trump has never kept those separate. We know he hasn't kept them separate. And so if, for example, that the senior Trump advisor who was attempted to be hacked was somebody like Susie Wiles, who's one of his two campaign managers, she's in charge of spending all the money, but she's also in charge of deciding whether people are loyal enough to have their defense attorneys paid for. So they're like, it's not just the lawyers who overlap like this, Susie Wiles, who is a very likely possibility for being the person who was at least attempted to be hacked is another one. And so those are the reasons why the fact that Donald Trump may have been hacked raise additional concerns. That's not the only one. Yeah. One of the other ones, which is really important is on the FBI on July 12th, actually the day before Thomas Crooks tried to shoot Donald Trump in a field in Pennsylvania, the FBI arrested this guy in Houston, a guy by the name of a chief merchant, who is Pakistani, but he has ties to Ron. And they charged him with attempting to solicit people to assassinate Donald Trump as payback for the assassination of Qasim Soleimani. And so one of the things that guy was doing, and we assume he may not be the only one, we assume that the informant that the FBI used to get to him is by no means the only one who is recruiting people to shoot Donald Trump. And in addition to recruiting assassins to shoot Donald Trump, and again, this guy is tied to the same people who hacked Roger Stone, as far as we know, he also was recruiting fake protesters, just like the Russians did in 2016. And the fake protesters were going to serve as a distraction to create an assassination attempt. So again, if you get Donald Trump's internal strategy about when you're going to do big rallies, for example, and Iran gets that, and they're trying to solicit people to be fake protesters to set up. I mean, it's just, yeah, Donald Trump is sloppy and legitimately, I mean, the assassination attempt, there's no reason to doubt the FBI on this. They've charged this guy, and we know, for example, that the Republican guard also tried to assassinate John Bolton. I mean, this is real, right, like they're pissed that their guy got killed. And so you are, you know, no matter what people thought about Hillary Clinton, there wasn't this kind of assassination ever by a hostile Russia wasn't trying to assassinate Hillary Clinton. They've assassinated other people. They weren't trying to assassinate Hillary Clinton around genuinely is trying to assassinate Trump or people close to him, and that changes the import of the additional targeting of his, of his campaign files. And I, you know, I hate the guy, right? But this is real. This is real life. And unfortunately, this is where we're what we're dealing with. Yeah. I mean, all the stakes, the actual stakes, not the campaign stakes, not the political stakes, but the actual national security stakes and everything else just seem so much higher here, and yet you going back to where we were discussing earlier that you have sort of a completely different take on it all. It seems, at least as of now, by the media, I hope they understand the national security implications. You're describing Marcy Wheeler. You've done it, I know on Twitter and at empty wheel.net. And I got to go. But just very quickly, if Iran was able to do this, and if they were able potentially to get, you know, access to that material, I presume it's also feasible that Russia might have access to that same material either on their own or in cahoots with Iranian hackers, China, Russia isn't cahoots with Iran and Russia was in cahoots with Roger Stone. So it's not the other thing that makes the Roger Stone targeting really interesting is in 2020, the same people or the Republican guard had a campaign in which they pretended to be proud boys and contacted registered Democrats and said, you have to vote for Donald Trump. We know how you're going to vote. It was a intimidation campaign. And that of course is interesting because Roger Stone is also super close to the proud boys. So the targeting of Roger Stone may not be separate from what Iran already tried to do in 2020 when they were pretending to be Roger Stone's buddies and intimidating Democrats that way. As always, I recommend people keep their eyes on Marcy Wheeler, whether it is at the Twitters, the site still known as Twitter at empty wheel or at her own blog, of course, with all the details, empty wheel.net, where she is an independent national security journalist paying attention to the stuff that matters, whether the rest of the media figures it out or not, or whether they follow her lead and eventually figure it out. Marcy, always great speaking with you. Thank you again for staying up late out there. And well, we may be talking in the days ahead. So good to be on. Thanks. Thank you, Marcy. Hey, before we get out here, some, a little bit of breaking news, I think, a note from Fox News. So, you know, take it for whatever grain of salt it's worth. I don't think I've seen it yet come in. But apparently, Democratic candidate for Vice President Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has posted onto Twitter on Wednesday, agreeing to debate on CBS News on October 1 with the Republican Vice President candidate J.D. Vance. That's October 1. That is a Tuesday, apparently. His reply came in response to CBS News listing potential dates in a Twitter post for Walz and the Republican nominee, Vice Presidential nominee. Tim Walz reposted the graphic saying, "See you on October 1, J.D." That said, apparently Vance has not yet responded to the debate proposal publicly. Vance and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News's, Fox News Digital's request for comment. So we will see. Right now, I think the next presidential debate, that presidential debate that has been agreed to between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is September 10 on ABC News after Donald Trump tried to duck it and wasn't able to. Yes. He tried to change the date. Nope, he didn't get any changes. So that's going to move ahead on Tuesday, September 10. And then in theory, a vice presidential debate on CBS on Tuesday, October 1. Got it? So that's what we've got so far. These should be very interesting debates. I'm really, really interested in seeing the debate between Walz and Vance, especially since Vance has basically denigrated the service of Walz in the military. We will see how that goes. I suspect nobody's going to watch these. They're going to be very low turnout affairs. Anyway, I got to get out. Thanks again to Marcie Wheeler of emptywheel.net and to all of you for spending a portion of your day or night with us. If you missed any portion of today's program, you can download it anytime for free at bradblog.com. That is available for free. Thanks only to those of you kind enough to hit one of those donate buttons at bradblog.com. Go straight to bradblog.com/donate if you prefer. We could not be on your public airwaves without your support. Thank you. And I know a lot of people are hitting you up right now with elections ongoing and everything else. Please don't forget about your independent media sources who rely really only on you. Thank you. In advance. Drop me email if you like. I'm Bradcast at bradblog.com on the Facebook's Mastodon's and site's still known as Twitter. I am the bradblog. We will see you there until we see you here next time. I'm Brad Freedman. Good luck world. You're listening to the bradcast. We are 100% listener supported thanks to listeners like you who drop by bradblog.com/donate.